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Why can't I write code inside my browser?

tomcritchlow.com

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Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#231

Post by MaxBarraclough »

PeterisP wrote: post #217
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? Please be specific or we can't have a meaningful discussion. I use Bash a fair amount and I don't consider it overly complicated as a shell. There are some rough edges in Unix, like handling spaces in directories, and I'm no fan of Bash as a scripting language, but I wouldn't say the basic model of the Unix command-line interface is overly complicated.

One aspect of standard command line experience is that the various standard unix tools have different, incompatible "interfaces" (different switches for the same things, requiring multiple different memorizations) - the experience could be "unified" to a common standard and it would be better and simpler, without removing any actual functionality, but they can't be because that would break backwards compatibility and…

True, but in my experience it's not a great concern in practice. If you have to administer various different Unices then I could see this being a real pain-point, but GNU/Linux has taken over most of the world.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#232

Post by krageon »

user-the-name wrote: post #104
kichimi wrote: post #96

I try to keep my comments nice on HN but in this case I can't, I've met this kind of person many times now and I just can't hold back. The author is lazy, and is channeling his energy into complaining rather than learning. He believes he is by default an expert on the 'user friendliness' of programming. His comments don't really make much sense, and come across as whining that should be ignored. "People hate command…

The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…

The problem isn't the user-friendliness of the tools (many very friendly tools exist), it's the amount of energy the author is willing to invest (approximately none). When exposed to truly trivial tooling, the problem becomes a lack of practice in the type of thinking that leads to good programs. There we see that the core of the issue why programming isn't "easy" is that it's just not.

It takes practice to get computers to do what you want to do well and no matter what tools you use getting to know the tools will not even take 5% of the time that you need to get to a place where you do what you want.

Furthermore, the clamoring that there is some sort of nefarious gatekeeping cabal keeping programming from being easy to whoever cares to shout about it is fundamentally dismissive of the actual effort and practice put in by people who used to have (but no longer have) this problem. Sometimes the answer is just that it's not trivial thing to do and this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We don't think this of math, we don't think this of making good drawings or paintings.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#233

Post by aspaceman »

Sorry. what?

F12->Console->Boom, Code.

It's legit right there? Open up a blank index.html page and you can even start adding canvas elements and stuff probably.

EDIT: After reading more carefully, I realize the author is of the "I just don't understand why this is so hard?" variety. Answer: There's a direct tradeoff between the expressiveness of your language and its difficulty. This is even a concept in linguistics. Take a look at several graphical programming languages, they are incredibly limited so they can be done graphically.

This article ticked me off honestly. Really feels like they just don't understand how and why people use text-based tools and command lines. It's not because we think we're better than you lol, we just like them more and find it more effective. It allows us to get the work done.

Another comment said intellectually lazy and I think that nails it. What a pile of crock.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#234

Post by lionkor »

PeterisP wrote: post #217
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? Please be specific or we can't have a meaningful discussion. I use Bash a fair amount and I don't consider it overly complicated as a shell. There are some rough edges in Unix, like handling spaces in directories, and I'm no fan of Bash as a scripting language, but I wouldn't say the basic model of the Unix command-line interface is overly complicated.

One aspect of standard command line experience is that the various standard unix tools have different, incompatible "interfaces" (different switches for the same things, requiring multiple different memorizations) - the experience could be "unified" to a common standard and it would be better and simpler, without removing any actual functionality, but they can't be because that would break backwards compatibility and…

-v for verbose

-o for outfile / output

-f for file / infile

-q for quiet

there are already many of these, and for the others that arent so common between tools. Compilers will, inevitably, need switches that, say, a code editor doesnt need.

You're right that, for example, `watch` has -n for "delay", and `htop` has -d, but then again those accept different types (seconds vs some other sub-second measurement).

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#235

Post by dijit »

maweki wrote: post #230
user-the-name wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It most definitely does NOT use that OS. That is a ridiculous claim.

Every OS, Windows as well, uses the concept of search paths, namespaces, and environmental variables.

I think he's speaking about First Edition UNIX, and, yes, we don't use that operating system.

We just use operating systems which implement concepts derived from there.

So, technically correct, though the argument has little merit.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#236

Post by lawl »

edu wrote: post #221

The author is not talking about "professional programming" but about a field called "end-user programming" or more generally "end-user development", which is a whole academic field with the goal os allowing end-users to develop their own solutions. From this field came things like Scratch [1]. If you're interested a very important paper in that area (from the philosophical aspect) is "Meta-Design: A manifesto for End…

> The author is not talking about "professional programming" but about a field called "end-user programming" or more generally "end-user development"

I do think VisualBasic(6) had a thing there. It was so easy to visually design a GUI and slap some code into it.

That said, as a "professional programmer" I once had to maintain such a VB6 application that was developed by someone that wasn't a professional programmer and that application was absolutely business critical for that company.

It wasn't fun to put it mildly. So my take on this is that it probably died for a reason.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#237

Post by d3ckard »

user-the-name wrote: post #210
ccmcarey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just kind of .. pathetic, to make statements like: > Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason And then offer absolutely no justification for why this is the case, and to shrug off any questions as to what obvious improvements could be made. You offer no useful contributions to the conversation by doing this. None.

Well, here's an example: You can develop a fully featured, world-class iOS app, and distribute it, without even touching a command line. Nothing in the process would get easier by touching a command line. You just don't need it. There is a fully-featured environment that provides all the tooling you need without it.

You do realize some of us use command line not because we have to, but because it’s usually easier to do so?

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#238

Post by ttt0 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #142

A lot of dunking of the "git gud" variety going on here, but the author has a solid point. Requiring a novice to learn arcana of a 30 year old Unix system before they can learn to program is purely extraneous. We could package programming languages up with GUI installers that set everything up correctly and let you get right to the code - and in fact, we used to. If you install IntelliJ, you'll have a fully-working J…

What arcana? Windows is not Unix and it uses PATH variable too. On most Linux distros you can simply run the equivalent to `sudo apt-get install nodejs` (or use a graphical front-end, if that's too hard for you) and everything will just work.

Just as an aside, GUI installers are an absolute cancer. I don't mind if there is an option to do that, but I just wish I could make a simple script for installing all the necessary programs on Windows, just like I can on Linux. But no, I have to spend two days doing nothing but manually clicking through the installers, because that's fun.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#239

Post by lionkor »

user-the-name wrote: post #210
ccmcarey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just kind of .. pathetic, to make statements like: > Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason And then offer absolutely no justification for why this is the case, and to shrug off any questions as to what obvious improvements could be made. You offer no useful contributions to the conversation by doing this. None.

Well, here's an example: You can develop a fully featured, world-class iOS app, and distribute it, without even touching a command line. Nothing in the process would get easier by touching a command line. You just don't need it. There is a fully-featured environment that provides all the tooling you need without it.

And it's very domain-specific, which is why it's super easy to make it so simple.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#240

Post by xiphias2 »

aspyct wrote: post #69
cryptica wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a variant of the no-code mindset where people expect coding to be easy. What they don't understand is that tools which aim to make coding easy or automatic don't add any value if the person using the tool doesn't understand all the nuances in the underlying logic which is being produced. Fully understanding the distinction between client and server is one such nuance. When it comes to coding, the bottleneck i…

> I don't think I've ever met anyone who was naturally good at thinking logically I've heard, though, that declarative programming (prolog, haskell etc) was a LOT easier for people who aren't trained in imperative programming. Whereas those who are actually have a hard time picking it up... As was my experience. @op have a look for declarative programming. You might like prolog :)

Both Prolog and Haskell make memory management really hard, and without good memory management you can’t reason about the run time of software.

Of course the solution is to learn a lot on the low level details of the compilers for these languages, at which point it’s not easier than imperative coding.

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